A recurring motif runs through many of 2025's blockbuster hits. This concept which extends back in time to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a jealous, sociopathic billionaire exploiting his enormous resources to smear Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the bad guy is a wealthy pharmaceutical heir spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed danger zone for personal amusement. Within the animated sequel *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a clan of ultra-rich lynxes who appropriated a altruistic inventor's life-changing idea and framed her for murder, purely for their financial benefit.
A Legacy of On-Screen Class Warfare
In the remake of *The Running Man*, the antagonist portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people enduring extreme hardship, while employing AI forgeries and a powerful propaganda machine to portray them as avaricious, indolent, terrifying criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its villains enjoy conspicuous opulence while exploiting and abusing Oz's poorest citizens, forcing them into unemployment and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's number one movie, contrasts the resourceful inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against condescending upper classes who live in extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Remarkably, the lighthearted comedy reboot *The Naked Gun* focuses on a billionaire's plot to cause global armageddon — for his own profit, needless to say.
It is not especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have excessive influence, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for increased fortune. "Elites are the bad guys and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures setting his chronically destitute beloved underdog against corporate bosses, authority figures, and bumbling wealthy fools. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" films of the 1930s to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the rapacious, destructive entrepreneurial bad guy, the complete chronicle of cinema is packed with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is contrary to core morality, and celebrate the overthrowing, defeat, and sometimes elimination of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
And yet, for some reason, we consistently fail to consuming the elite. Every time elected officials respond to a public shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I roll my eyes, because if people truly were that susceptible — if regular exposure to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the public consciousness — surely American society would not continue to worship billionaires. But the news reveals every single day that a alarming number of Americans subconsciously equate riches with intelligence and value to society, even after a century of history's most popular movies communicating the reverse.
Actually, it appears that the constant stream of class-conscious storylines in American cinema has given us a pressure release that impedes real-world action. Offered a regular dose of largely happily-ever-after stories where the underdog wins, while the billionaires are defanged and humiliated, everyone can walk away satisfied about right prevailing. These films are like moral fairy tales, suggesting that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will weed out any bad apples among the generally industrious, moral, worthy wealthy who pulled themselves up through sheer effort.
A Sharper Tone in 2025
But while 2025's movies do not break new ground in that sense, they do follow some contemporary patterns among class warfare stories: They’re getting more furious, sharper, more specific, and observably more fatal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people gain some humility in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or be stripped of wealth to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and executed at close range on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were killed with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an up-and-coming rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s extremely affluent villains get the hauled off to jail finale, perhaps because it’s become so apparent that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to purchase their freedom."
The "behind bars" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are likely to die at the final act of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Outliers
There are exceptions, of course. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up exiled to the digital realm, where he’s clearly being saved for possible sequels. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is transformed as a person. The antagonist family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as culprits, but they don’t meet|avoid
